March 20, 2016

"It is one prejudice gentry liberals and gentry conservatives share. It is perhaps the last acceptable bigotry, and you can see it expressed on any primetime TV program. The insults don’t all seem good-natured to me. I grew up in central Pennsylvania, surrounded by the kind of people supporting Trump, and I sympathize with their worsening plight. For generations, they went all in for the American dream. Their families fought the wars, worked in the factories, taught school, coached Little League and built a middle-class culture. Now they are abandoned and know it. Nobody speaks for them. The left speaks for the unions, the poor and the nonwhite, even shedding tears for illegal immigrants and rioters and looters. The GOP speaks for the Chamber of Commerce, big business and Wall Street. Trump alone is bringing many of these forgotten Americans into the political system.... I would be delighted to support a more conventional candidate who has Trump’s courage and appeal, but we don’t always get to pick our revolutionaries. And make no mistake, Donald Trump is leading a political revolution that is long overdue."

It isn't just white. A lot of working class Hispanics are on board too. All of the people we used to employ on our family orchard and extended families who have been here working for 2 generations. Some have businesses now. They are the ones who suffer the most from the illegal immigration crime wave. There are stories in the local paper every day about it and the perps and the victims overwhelmingly share ethnicity.

The legal ones like the ones I described have more in common with white working class than they do with the la raza crowd the media props up.

It is not a might. He is the first Republican ever who is pointing out Black people got screwed by Obama.

I know many in the Hispanic working class. He is going to bring them in in large numbers because he is listening to them and not projecting the CoC amnesty wishes on a community that is being torn apart by the illegal crime wave.

The left speaks for the unions, the poor and the nonwhite, even shedding tears for illegal immigrants and rioters and looters. The GOP speaks for the Chamber of Commerce, big business and Wall Street.

Well, sort of. Go down to Appalachia and ask a UMW member what he thinks of the left's support for unions. Or go to a city where the Democrat leadership has done the kowtow to BLM and ask a member of the FOP. Also a lot of the big businesses -- especially in Silicon Valley and on Wall Street -- support Democrats, something that the RNC still doesn't quite seem ready to accept.

No one speaks for the small businesses. They gravitate without enthusiasm to the Republicans because the GOP treats them with indifference and the Democrats actively hate them.

But on the whole Goodwin is more right than wrong. Trump's a jackass and lacks many of the qualities I'd like to see in president, but he's speaking for these people and as far as Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, and Reince Priebus are concerned, they don't exist.

The Dems don't have the union members. They have the union leaders. Trump has the union members. There used to be a lot more of them before jobs got shipped to other countries. Union leaders couldn't stop this so they were pretty useless. The union leaders were no match for bipartisan trade policy.

Trump's a jackass and lacks many of the qualities I'd like to see in president, but he's speaking for these people and as far as Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, and Reince Priebus are concerned, they don't exist.

Yes and they are not telling pollsters, who are mostly minimum wage college kids, what they think.

Elites are perfectly comfortable with discriminating against Asian Americans in higher education, in ignoring the blue collar when they aren't mocking them, and in maintaining a majority of blacks in the permanent underclass. The elites love Latinos because they work hard for low wages and keep their mouths shut while they service the elites by serving their food in fine restaurants, raising their children, and cutting their lawns. Plus, although Latinos are poor and undereducated like blacks, they arent anyhere near as violent. So they are perfect for the elites. Given them a higher minimum wage and substandard schools and healthcare that are much better than Mexico and they are happy.

I am white but I am certainly not poor, have been a huge beneficiary of the last "recovery", do not live in the sticks, lean liberal on social issues, labored years in the civil rights movement and taught in an historically black college, own bespoke clothing, travel first class and have been all over the world. The anti-Trump crowd has convinced me that Trump is the way to go. When Cruz decided to side with the rioters in Chicago, the people proud of "shutting down" Trump, I wrote Cruz off. He is full of shit.

Every time I listen to or read one of these pundits going off on Trump and using words like fascist or Hitler or vulgar or crazy I am more in favor of him. They aren't talking about him, they are talking about the great unwashed in our country, the people who fix these assholes" cars and plumbing and build their pool houses and pave their streets and replace their roofs and mine the products that make their lives as fucking smooth as silk.

It isn't just white. A lot of working class Hispanics are on board too.

And middle class Whites, Hispanices, and Blacks as well. The Left (especially the political class)has forgotten that many of these groups are just a generation or two away from being working class. I suspect Trump has more support in these areas than anyone on the other side realizes.

Good thing he has his "gut" because he presents no evidence that anti-Trump sentiment is due to contempt for working class whites. He sounds a lot like leftists who just "knew" that all the anti-Obama vitriol was due to anti-black sentiment.

Just maybe some of us who despise Trump don't have anything against working class whites, and our feelings about this vain, ignorant, unstable blowhard have to do with what he says and does. Naaah....must be contempt for the working class! Much easier to just go with that.

Trump is no revolutionary, he is a pied piper who has mastered the blue collar siren song. He is leading the rethuglicans straight off a cliff and onto the rocks. It's no wonder the political genius William Jefferson Clinton encouraged his friend and foundation supporter to run for president.

"Their families fought the wars, worked in the factories, taught school, coached Little League..." And there are more people like this, but living fairly prosperous lives for now. We too feel the contempt; we see where things are going; we fear for what our kids will face; we see it's being thrown away. It's not only the people suffering economically.

They’ve had it with vanilla men who play nice and quietly lose elections. ...It is one prejudice gentry liberals and gentry conservatives share. ... It is perhaps the last acceptable bigotry, ...

Yes, it is. To which another blog's commenter said "This past week has caused me to look hard in the mirror and wonder: are "our" elites just as outrageous as "their" elites?"

I asked myself the same question as I read the shocking and disappointing NRO article by authors (and signatories) I have (had?) great respect for, titled "An appeal to our fellow Catholics... and all men and women of goodwill" Excerpts:

Donald Trump is manifestly unfit to be president of the United States. ... There are indeed many reasons to be concerned about the future of our country, and to be angry at political leaders and other elites. We urge our fellow Catholics and all our fellow citizens to consider, however, that there are candidates... who do not exhibit his vulgarity, oafishness, shocking ignorance, and — we do not hesitate to use the word — demagoguery.

I dunno, maybe it's passive-aggressiveness (in addition to the giant "fuck you" to the establishment) on a mass scale that is part of Trump's rising. People are fed up with the elite chumps telling them what to do. Every anti-Trump antic--from the elite screeds to the undocumented paid protesters, seems to net him gains.

Brando: You still underestimate Trump like the checked-pants Rockefeller country club republicans who are losing control of their party. Trump is vain, but he is crazy like a fox, unstable like a wrecking-ball and is blowing the exact tune "folks" want to hear.

The GOP and the Dems positions don't offer anything for blue collar. The GOP appeals to what's left of the country club republicans, evangelicals, and the small government tea party types who love Social Security and Medicare and think small government is rolling the government back to the size it was in 2008.

The chasm Trump has exposed between working class white voters and George Will/Bill Krystol elites is the same that exists between Campus elite socialist liberals and inner city African-Americans. One just revolted earlier than the other.

"If the 'working class' believes their quality of life will improve through borders closed to immigration and trade then we're lucky that politicians sympathetic to their beliefs haven't been in power."1) The middle classes and working classes have seen their wages decline through the last few decades of open immigration and free trade.2) The middle and working classes have seen family wealth (mostly wealth) destroyed by a banking system designed by the elites and managed by the elites.3) In this time of open immigration, free trade, and financial folly, the elites have grown more wealthy, not less wealthy.

I believe a President Trump is unlikely to identify the Leviathan State as the enemy of freedoms and economic expansion. I think he believes he can negotiate with that croctopus (apologies to Churchill) to be eaten last.

"Hatred is what progressives do; anger is their modus operandi for daily life"

This what I think Trump does so well: he destroys the stories liberals tell about themselves, to themselves. He breaks their narratives apart and shows everyone that there is no there, there. Just an empty shell with no substrate behind it. Hillary is the acme of this reality--the progressives in the party desperately need her to be something she is not because without her, without the possibility of her victory, they have next to nothing--just a grumpy 77 year old codger with no political future.

If Trump wins and actually does something for the poor the current Democratic coalition is dead. And given that the Republicans already control both Houses of Congress and most of the state Governorships the reality is that Trump is a much greater threat to the Democrats than he ever will be to the Republican establishment. Its not simply that they have no bench (except maybe Warren and Cumo), it's that they will have no base other than the social liberals and they can't win elections based upon pleas to sympathy alone.

The argument I hear from the free-marketeers is that we live in a global economy with increased competition, where education is much more important than it used to be. Americans will have to work harder and invest more to get the same return from their labor that they did before globalization.This sounds to me a lot like the message Jimmy Carter was trying to sell the American voter back in the late 1970s. "The good times are over, pal, your best days are behind you."

Michael@1:03 -- You've captured a lot ground in that comment. I've heard very similar assessments on the ground.

Trump has exposed one absolute truth: the so-called elite has tremendous disdain for the working class. Most Amerucans don't share that vulgar opinion -- thank goodness. Where I sit on the economic scale is unimportant, but I have friends and acquaintances on both extremes (day laborers to movers-and-shakers) who have great passion for Trump.

Birkel: You are naive to think the voters and not big money have ruled the GOP and the Democrat Party. Why do we always have an investment bankers, frequently from Goldman Sachs as treasury secretary no matter the "party" in power?

If the GOP does not broker away Trump, then you will be right. Either way, Hitlary wins.

I don't understand why the argument breaks down on either / or lines. Clearly Trump has low income white support and the de-manufacturing of the US economy has screwed them hard. But just as clearly, Trump has said a lot of things that are far beyond simply being "politically incorrect". He as spoken admiringly of Kim Jung Un for "wiping out" his political opponents, been untroubled by Putin's killing of opposition journalists, etc. He is a grand "wizard" of emotional manipulation according to his admirers. Being worried about what Trump could do to our democratic experiment is not the same as being bigoted against his supporters. That is really doing what the Left always does. You don't like such-and-such a position. It's because you don't like black people. Trump is a fraud, and I think people who are heedless to the threat he may represent are foolishly playing with fire. But here's the tricky part. I think Trump supporters are making a tragic mistake. Many Trump supporters are poor whites. That does not mean I hate poor whites. That a Democrat makes this kind of mistake, I get. That fellow Republicans are going to call racist on their opponents after being on the receiving end of it all these years based on what their "gut" tells them is beyond sad.

James Longfellow wrote . . .He breaks their narratives apart and shows everyone that there is no there, there. Just an empty shell with no substrate behind it.When Hillary or her supporters talk about her successes as secretary of state, they inevitably repeat women's rights boilerplate:Globally, no candidate has done more for women’s rights than Secretary Clinton. In her time as Secretary of State, she appointed the first-ever Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues at the State Department; oversaw the creation of the U.S. National Action Plan on Women, Peace, and Security; and introduced the Global Health Initiative (GHI), investing $63 billion to help partner countries provide robust maternal and infant health services. Secretary Clinton has worked tirelessly to elevate women’s rights as the key towards economic prosperity and global stability. Her public and private initiatives have appropriated millions of dollars towards providing secondary education to young girls around the world, and tackling the obstacles that face at-risk youths.

This stuff probably plays well with the Democrat activist base, but real Americans find it inane. It is as though she thought the state department was the kind of non-profit community organization that old, empty-nest women get involved in.

What did Obama say to them? They cling to their guns and religion. Well, Hillary had them in her pocket in 2008. They walked away from Obama and they are not coming back to Hillary because she has walked away from them in 2016. As simple as that. For these people Trump is not as Republican that they will hate him. All disenfranchised middle is coalescing around Trump.

How about the video from the Arizona rally of a black Trump supporter punching the shit out of the modern day, back pack wearing Abbie Hoffman wanna be. The protestor with the KKK hood on was coming up the stairs right behind.

Michael K--I don't claim any special insight into the man but base my opinion on him on what I've observed. Much as some see in him the answer to out problems, I see him as making things worse. But this idea that people like me don't care about the working class is baseless. It reminds me of the "you don't care about black people!" stuff from the left.

Trump's advisor Stephen Miller, he is one of the new faces from the campaign and he is great. One of the points he made on Bartiromo's show this morning was that America cannot prosper as a service-based economy alone. I have not heard any other politico say that so far. And you want to know where I heard it first? Some 20+ years, when we were discussing 'America and its future' with one of our brilliant Indian friends.And who does not benefit from a service-based economy? It is the working class people who perhaps had vocational skills that saw them through their mining or manufacturing jobs.

"Just maybe some of us who despise Trump don't have anything against working class whites, and our feelings about this vain, ignorant, unstable blowhard have to do with what he says and does. Naaah....must be contempt for the working class! Much easier to just go with that."

It's class snobbery through and through. For months I've been saying the Trump haters despise him because HE is blue collar, culturally, if not financially. He would fit right in shooting the shit with the regular guys in a working class bar in Brooklyn or Queens. The elites, intellectuals, academics, policy wonks, and eggheads in general despise such people. Like someone up thread said, it's the last acceptable bigotry.

Trump actually plans to make America great again by bringing back the industrial plants shipped to China. He is bringing them back to a Cheap Energy source that is presently replacing Saudi Arabia and their British allies so fast that the Saudis have launched the world's biggest Predatory Price cutting ever seen to kill it before it's too late

No, it's not contempt. It's disbelief. It's clear that tariffs on imports will hurt the working class by increasing the prices of basically everything. You want a trade war, then get ready for the price of everything at Walmart to increase a lot.This happened with the tire import tariffs Obama imposed in 2009. The cost of tires went up for all consumers and that act didn't really end up saving any jobs. Mitt Romney actually used that as an argument against Obama in a debate by accusing him of buying votes from unions in return for basically nothing. Here's what actually happened:"The tariffs did ultimately lead to a 30% reduction in Made in China tire imports from 2009 to 2011, but that didn’t mean 30% more tires were produced in the U.S. It just meant that 30% more tires were imported from Canada; 110% more from South Korea; 44% more from Japan; 152% more from Indonesia; 154% more from Thailand; 117% more from Mexico and 285% more from low volume provider Taiwan, according to the U.S. International Trade Commission."When it comes to global trade, the horse has already bolted. Trump makes grand promises that he can turn back the clock, but he can't. Besides, India, China and South East Asia have close to 3 billion potential customers. Do you really want to hurt American companies selling their products there with these BS Trumpian policies? Yes, jobs were lost, but on balance a lot of money was invested into the US economy by sovereign wealth funds and investors using their trade surplus to buy American debt and invest in US based ventures. That obviously isn't something that Trump cites. Let's also talk about how the US government can't force a private company like Apple to produce its products in the US because of supply chain issues which makes China such a great partner. I could go on about how all the policies being thrown around by Trump and Sanders will actually hurt the working class, but I'd rather talk about what can be done to help them. It would be a good idea to invest the largesse gained from trade towards worker retraining programs, and towards igniting innovation in technologies that could potentially have a multi-decade impact like microelectronics or the internet. Clean energy seems like a good bet. Reducing corporate tax rates and closing tax loopholes will also help keep jobs. Good education policy and starting more technical high schools will also help...

"The GOP speaks for the Chamber of Commerce, big business and Wall Street."

So says an acknowledged registered Democrat and Obama-voter.

We know a few things, with only a little information about The New York Post's Michael Goodwin. One is that he can't possibly be concerned about the direction or future of the Republican Party; he is by his own account a registered Democrat.

Another is that we have little reason to trust his judgment of policies or issues or candidates; by his own account he voted for Obama.

Last but most important, Michael Goodwin seems to judge candidates on some personal likability measure derived from his gut. His gut apparently told him to vote for Obama in 2008. I don't know what his gut told him in 2012, but early in this campaign, his gut told him that Trump wasn't a serious candidate. But now his gut is telling him that Trump is a serious candidate. Without a single thought as to any guiding philosophy (conservative, or not).

I believe a President Trump is unlikely to identify the Leviathan State as the enemy of freedoms and economic expansion. "

I'm curious at all these people who "know" what he will do.

I don't and have no idea. I do know what Hillary will do.

I do know what the GOP Congress has done the past six years.

I'm with the guy who wrote this Post piece.

As noted, I do admire Cruz, but he strikes me as more Barry Goldwater than Ronald Reagan. He’s whip smart, but too rigid ideologically and personally joyless. If I were president, I would nominate him for the Supreme Court in hopes he could fill Antonin Scalia’s shoes as the leading constitutionalist.

Which leaves only Donald J. Trump. He’s weird, erratic and I have no idea what he will say or do next. His nasty put-downs of rivals and journalists, especially Megyn Kelly, diminish him. His policies are as detailed as bumper stickers and his lack of knowledge about complex issues scares me.

If he weren’t the GOP front-runner, the gaps in his game would make it easy to dismiss him. But dismissing him requires dismissing the concerns of the 7.5 million people who have voted for him. That I can’t do.

My gut tells me much of the contempt for Trump reflects contempt for his working-class white support. It is one prejudice gentry liberals and gentry conservatives share.

It is perhaps the last acceptable bigotry, and you can see it expressed on any primetime TV program. The insults don’t all seem good-natured to me. I grew up in central Pennsylvania, surrounded by the kind of people supporting Trump, and I sympathize with their worsening plight.

For generations, they went all in for the American dream. Their families fought the wars, worked in the factories, taught school, coached Little League and built a middle-class culture. Now they are abandoned and know it.

Nobody speaks for them. The left speaks for the unions, the poor and the nonwhite,

I get that. The rest is speculation.

I just hope some serious people join up as I think he will be elected unless the GOPe figures out a way to exclude him. Then we will have hell to pay.

Manufacturing will not return to America without significant regulatory rollback.

I agree with that. Carrier isn't moving its manufacturing to Mexico simply to save a few bucks on salary.

A NYT story I saw on that put the hourly wage for a Carrier employer at $30 - $35 an hour, the Mexicans will be getting $5 - $10 a day. So best case scenario for Carrier is they save $175 per day per employee. That sounds like a lot, but there are other costs associated with manufacturing in Mexico.

Political stability, corruption. crime level, infrastructure, etc are all additional factors that add to the cost of doing business in Mexico. However, by moving to Mexico you no longer have to deal with OSHA and pollution laws, and a whole host of other regulations, and that is the real benefit to Carrier.

The savings they realize from no longer having to follow US regulations far outstrip any "savings" they may realize from stiffing their American workers.

More must-read Kevin Williamson, at the National Review Online:The populist Right’s descent into Trumpism has been accompanied by another chorus of that great daft stupid hymn of American political economy: “We Don’t Make Things Here Anymore.” That is completely untrue, of course: As measured by the Industrial Production Index, we’re producing four times as much today as we did in 1960. Our exports have been flirting with record levels for a while, and we export many times more than what we did in the 1950s or 1960s. The largest markets for our exports are also the countries from which we take most of our imports: Canada, Mexico, and China. This is no surprise. Would you rather be a midlevel employee at a textile mill, or at Apple? “But when you go into Walmart, nothing says ‘Made in the USA.’ Everything says ‘Made in China’!” Some variation on that claim can be heard on every talk-radio show, in every mentally dead Donald Trump speech, and on nine-tenths of the barstools across the fruited plains. It got to be so common that a couple of years back Walmart pledged to buy an extra $250 billion in U.S.-made goods over the course of a decade. The firm immediately ran into trouble meeting that pledge. As James B. Kelleher put it in The Huffington Post, would-be Walmart suppliers faced “an experienced workforce, and other shortcomings.” That’s a very polite way of saying that the stuff they sell at Walmart isn’t the kind of stuff that Americans make. Yes, China is an absolute powerhouse in the world flip-flop market — good for them.

...

The Chinese buy vast quantities of American soybeans not because we have a clever trade policy vis-à-vis tofu-making material, but because American farmers are the world’s best and most efficient producers of soybeans, so much so that it makes more sense to ship them halfway around the world than to grow them in China or in nearby countries that are, in purely agricultural terms, perfectly capable of producing soybeans. (You may not think of soybeans or cotton as a high-tech wonder of American ingenuity, but only because you don’t know much about where soybeans or cotton come from.) It isn’t Italian protectionism that inclines Americans to buy Armani suits and Gucci briefcases. The Italians really are good at that sort of thing. And, as it turns out, lots of Americans want inexpensive flip-flops. De gustibus and all that.

Nyamujal said...It would be a good idea to invest the largesse gained from trade towards worker retraining programs, and towards igniting innovation in technologies that could potentially have a multi-decade impact like microelectronics or the internet. Clean energy seems like a good bet. Reducing corporate tax rates and closing tax loopholes will also help keep jobs. Good education policy and starting more technical high schools will also help... The problem with 'retraining programs' is that labor is not capital. Capital is fungible. You can move a million dollars to where it will get the best return with a phone call or by clicking a button on a browser. It takes at least months and more often years to retrain a worker. In many cases the idea of retraining is a panacea. Are you going to turn a pipe fitter into a stock broker or a software engineer? Back in the 70s and 80s, many state-sponsored 'job retraining' programs tried to turn assembly line workers into data-entry clerks. Then all the data entry jobs were mechanized or sent overseas. The money spent to retrain a worker, and to support him or her while being retrained is an economic inefficiency that can be addressed by importing cheap overseas labor or by exporting the labor overseas, or by using tech to decrease the numbers of skilled workers needed to perform the job. You can't lament that people prefer economic inefficiency over being unemployed, and then propose a fix that involves accepting economic inefficiency so that people can stay employed.

People who can't get a job because of illegal immigration and manufacturing being shipped overseas just aren't interested in being lectured on comparative advantage.

Also, for most people the choice isn't between being a mid-level employee at a textile mill or a mid-level employee at Apple. The fact that he put that in the article just goes to prove what a tool Kevin Williamson is.

It's funny that the writer uses the word contempt, because it seems that Trump expresses contempt toward anyone who does not praise him (I also think that Cruz oozes with high levels of contempt for his opposition, in turn, provoking it in others). Maybe it is a mass form of projective identification. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projective_identification)

@rehajm": The middle classes and working classes have seen their wages decline through the last few decades of open immigration and free trade./Not if you measure correctly" There you go again, citing evidence and all, when Scott Adams has already explained to you that emotions drive everything.

Conservatives used to think the lying, manipulative, substance-free, counterproductive politics of the Left was bad. Now we are being told that the lying, manipulative, substance-free, counterproductive politics of Trump is the way to show respect for the "working class." No. To view Trump as antidote to anti-prole contempt is itself a form of gross condescension.

Contempt for the white working class among DC and NYC wealth and power controllers is as. Old as the hills.

Trump is only infuriating the wealth and power guys by exposing them as pro foreign weath flow schemes and showing how he can protectThe Working Americans of every race and ethnicity from the scams hidden under pretense of Pure Free Trade Conservatism by god's Pastor Ted through a deal with his wife's employers.

1) Free trade was sold to the American electorate via promises that sure, those crappy jobs would go to third worlders (where they don't worry so much about pollution or worker safety or unions, wink wink, nod nod) but everybody would get shiny new science fiction type jobs working in "computers" or some shit like that.2) The 1986 amnesty was sold as the absolute, last, honest to God, ever amnesty because after that we would start enforcing the immigration laws and there wouldn't be any illegal immigration. Pinky swear!

Well maybe he does understand that, but he definitely doesn't understand that a pretty large percentage of Americans have decided that they are mad as hell and aren't going to take it anymore.

...the view that economic anxiety explains the rise of Trump has become prevalent on both the left and the right. There is, however, little evidence that points to that conclusion.

From exit poll data in the states that have had primaries:

Trump performed no better in states where the economy was the biggest issue than in other states. In the ten states where the economy was the top issue, Trump won eight, or 80 percent. In the five states where the economy was second, Trump won four . . . or 80 percent. His average margin of victory was 7.8 points in states where the economy ranked second but just 6.9 points in states where the economy was the top issue.

Trump also did worse among voters for whom the economy was a top issue than among other voters. He won voters who chose the economy as their top issue in 10 of 15 states, worse than his showing among voters over all, which he carried in 12 of 15. While he won jobs-and-economy voters in ten states, he won immigration voters in twelve, and terrorism voters in twelve. In all 15 states, Trump’s margin of victory was higher among at least one other category of voters than it was among jobs-and-economy voters. In eight states, Trump’s margins were greater on at least two other issues, and in two states his margins were lowest among jobs-and-economy voters.

Re the culture:

The idea that Trump’s success primarily reflects the failure of conservative policies to address the economic concerns of its base gets things completely backward. Those whom public-opinion analyst Sean Trende calls “cultural traditionalists” are in the Republican party today because they left the Democratic party beginning in the 1960s. Those who rejected liberal cultural positions related to civil rights, feminism, the counterculture, secularism, and anti-authoritarianism fatefully were embraced by the Republican party.

Concern about immigration is concern about jobs. Illegal immigrants are competition for jobs for blue collar workers. The fact that the author separates concern over illegal immigration from people concerned about jobs tells me a lot about his perspective, but I don't see how it helps deconstruct the perception that Trump support is caused by economic anxiety.

That said, yeah a lot of Trump's support is cultural, in that, according to at least one poll, most Trump supporters feel that they have no say in government. Now the author may be OK with that since they apparently don't agree with him, but Trump supporters may not agree.

Howard said...Trump is no revolutionary, he is a pied piper who has mastered the blue collar siren song. He is leading the rethuglicans straight off a cliff and onto the rocks. It's no wonder the political genius William Jefferson Clinton encouraged his friend and foundation supporter to run for president.

3/20/16, 1:15 PM"

The 'political genius' will be visiting his wife on visitors day and that's assuming he avoids being sent up the river for corruption. Perhaps the Federal Bureau of Prisons can give them a special accommodation by providing them a double wide conjugal prison cell.

Yes and they are not telling pollsters, who are mostly minimum wage college kids, what they think.

If that were true, we'd see Trump perform better in the primary elections than he does in the pre-primary polls. In fact the opposite is true.

This all sounds a lot like the wishful thinking we heard so much about just before the 2012 election. Many conservatives convinced themselves that the polls were understating Romney's support, but in fact the pollsters mostly got it right.

Trump's supporters are clearly anti-immigrant. Not only do they call for stopping illegal immigration, they also want many fewer H1-B visas, fewer green cards, and less legal immigration. Some of them express outrage at having to hear Spanish spoken in public. And you expect large numbers of Hispanics to vote with them? Dream on.

Duh. That's the problem with hierarchies and the way conservatives obsess over trying to find ways of implementing them. In America they thought that doing this by wealth/class would make it more feasible, but it doesn't.

Fixing things for the working class is going to be hard in a lot of places, but easy in some others. Obama has killed the pipeline from Canada, and prevented fracking off shore. Those can presumably be reversed as easily as they were instituted. And, probably ditto for the fossil fuels nonsense (except that that air "quality" nonsense would have to go through more notice and comment by the EPA - but that just needs different people in charge there). And, the feds could start authorizing nuclear plants, which are immensely safer than the ones we have had in the past. All of these things would bring down energy costs, and, thus, the costs of living, for a very large percentage of Americans. Energy costs were intentionally driven up by Obama and the Democrats, and can be brought down intentionally just as easily.

The 4.2 million government workers will not willingly follow a new direction. The eight years of Obama added 900,000 new federal employees. Add in the hundreds of thousands of turnover and you have more than a million Obama-selected workers.

Too funny, "Rhythm and Balls"! I want less power invested in the federal government. I want fewer rules and regulations.

All right. That's not going to happen. 30 years of conservative rule has only bloated it. They refuse to define a budget to GDP ratio as Obama had requested for a parameter about this whole weird "size" issue and don't mean it. If they did what they say they wanted then they could no longer run a permanent campaign on it and that's that.

The record on this point is crystal clear, comrade.

You're the one who wants and actually thinks he's going to get a revolution of ideology after 30 years of the most conservatively radical anti-government talking-point talkers that have ever existed.

You're way too stupid to realize that the people who run for jobs in the organization they claim to hate are not doing so in order to tear it down - no matter how conclusively they've convinced you that they would.

It really does take a dummy of the highest order to believe that hiring someone who says he wants to take the company down is a rational idea.

Oh, it will happen. Wishing away reality will not release you from the inevitable.

This is like watching the limbless knight in Monty Python. The GOP tears itself down while in the process of tearing itself away from the elitists whose talking points Burpel gravitates to like the swirl in a flushing toilet bowl, but the "reality" of their inevitably prevailing is going to happen. ;-)

You would have us eat the seed corn and then complain at next year's harvest. I am not so foolish.

Can you use a metaphor that applies to the real life that all us non-farmers live in?

No, I don't need to show my work. I'm making a statement about how Trump is perceived by Hispanics. All of the polls agree with common sense: Hispanics mostly don't like Trump. They think he's anti-immigrant, and if he's the Republican nominee, they will also think the party is anti-immigrant. You pretending there's a difference in a blog comment will make no difference to how Hispanics vote. They are going to hurt the Republicans even worse than they did in 2012.

You know, it's conceivable that there could be a difference between being anti-immigration and being anti-immigrant. If, for example, immigration were costing the jobs of people who are already here. But every empirical study done by actual economists who know how to do these things says that's not the case. Similarly, if new immigrants were comitting crimes at a higher rate than people already here, but again that's not the case. If you go down the list of reasons why you might be anti-immigration without being anti-immigrant, it turns out that none of them are valid. We're left with ignorance or racism. Are you ignorant, Birkel?

The Kevin Williamson argument is the conventional one of comparative advantage. It is correct within its assumptions, if one sticks to theory. Unfortunately in economics theories suffer from an inability to find all the factors that may be in play. In engineering a machine builder could, for instance, specify parts based on some limited strength of materials formula, but if he doesnt take into account something like harmonics he could be making a disastrous error. Such factors can be found through careful empirical tests that are impossible in economics. Free trade/comparative advantage, beyond a fairly general point (hermit kingdoms are right out) are not especially well supported by empirical evidence. Part of this is so much of the evidence, modeling, etc. normally used for analysis is collinear with a multitude of other modern trends in macroeconomic models. It is a theory for which the data is unavailable. The other arguments Williamson cites - re growth in "output" - are also collinear with other modern trends. Improvements in technology have the bulk of the credit here, and I believe also "soft" social factors that are ignored in most development models because they can't be quantified, such as a propensity for risk-taking or degree of personal initiative, just a few things that vary among cultures. And these things have extremely complex feedback loops. In machine design terms, this means most of the rules of thumb, empirical formulas, for drawing-board design just aren't there.The soundest approach, given that macro models are useless, is micro ones. A single industry/market at a time. This ignores the entirely theoretical outcome of comparative advantage, where it's assumed that an alternative advantaged industry will substitute for the loss of a disadvantaged one.

Last time MichaelK (with the loser daughter, who may or may not work at McDonalds along with all those other "losers" that the GOP elite hate) jumped aboard, it was to bemoan the tragedy he felt for being a simple self-hating non-Jew.

R&B,Median is the appropriate measure for these comparisons. Even so, median income or median disposable income measures favor the US considerably vis a vis nearly all of Europe. There is an enormous literature on this, a great deal of it trying (for obvious political/policy reasons) to find an alternate measure with more politically acceptable results, like the HDI.

Come November who will R & B hold his nose and vote for? Donny the Fascist or Hillary the Criminal and Traitor? Or if by chance its a contest between Ted the Evangelist and Hillary the Grifter? Or will he go third party? Inquiring minds want to know. As bad as it is for the Republicans it must really be hard for Democrats when their front runner is a criminal and traitor who might be indicted after the convention or worse still if Obama pardons her and she gets elected only to be the first president to be impeached and removed. At least the Republican Old Guard recognizes it has a problem with Trump. The Democrat Elders are in what appears to be in deep, deep denial.

"Free trade/comparative advantage, beyond a fairly general point (hermit kingdoms are right out) are not especially well supported by empirical evidence."

The problem with the theory is that, if a country commits suicide by regulation and idiotic policies like "global warming," all free trade bets are off. One weakness of libertarians is that they assume the rules apply to everyone and the Second Law of Thermodynamics won't bite them in the ass.

She must love the way you come on here so often to berate her. (At least, when it's not overshadowed by your need to berate me. Or just working Americans who don't conform to the elitism that you hold in such high regard).

Interesting that you knew the one I was talking about, despite pretending to now find pride in her being a government agent.

That's Republicans for you. Talking about liberty and government tyranny while their kids go to work for government agencies that will collude with Hillary Clinton.

It's ok, Michael K. She and Hillary can bond. They can talk about going through emails and setting up email servers and being too good to either flip burgers or be a conventional Arkansas first lady.

Come November who will R & B hold his nose and vote for? Donny the Fascist or Hillary the Criminal and Traitor?

Neither. No vote. Count me out.

Let guys like Michael the Daughter Basher decide how he's going to rationalize his vote for Hillary. Maybe it will be to set a good example for young women, or something.

This is the worst election we've ever had. The choice is between a rank narcissist and a rank opportunist. Someone who never failed at getting other people's failures to work for him and someone who never failed to take credit for other people's successes.

All economic theories suffer from the lack of data and the inability to experiment, other than "natural experiments". The result is an inability to find and deal with factors that may be critical, but are unavailable as data or imperceptible. Social factors are at the top of the list. I have a long relationship with Development Economics. No economic policy model/theory will explain, say, Bangladesh vs South Korea over the last 70 years.

My gut tells me much of the contempt for Trump reflects contempt for his working-class white support. It is one prejudice gentry liberals and gentry conservatives share. It is perhaps the last acceptable bigotry, and you can see it expressed on any primetime TV program.

I think Donald Trump suggests a brutality that many people find abhorrent. Specifically, it's his willingness/eagerness to inflict pain. To use torture on captured terrorists, and to intentionally kill their family members. It's also stuff like, "I don't mind a trade war." Trump is a fighter, and many of the men in the Republican party are itching for a fight.

But I was struck today by how some Republicans are more scared of Donald Trump than they are of Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton. For instance, George Will wrote a column that says, in essence, that the Senate ought to hear and confirm Merrick Garland because Trump's nominee will be embarrassing and bad.

It's rather astounding to me that a so-called Republican would be impressed with the Ivy League credentials of Garland. It's a bunch of Ivy League Supreme Court Justices who, after all, said it was a constitutional right to stab a baby in the neck. My opposition to Trump's glee in killing innocent people is rather like my opposition to the baby-killing the Supreme Court does on a routine basis.

I think George Will, like much of our media, finds pro-life people obnoxious, low-class, and tacky. They are much more upset about pro-lifers than they are about abortion. George Will's network, whatever it is, has been censoring abortion photographs for 40 years. And he wants to put another status quo, "it has been decided," baby-killer on the bench, rather than take a chance that Donald Trump might nominate...who, exactly? The Ivy League has already gone Jack the Ripper.

Maybe the embarrassment about Trump is that he talks that barbaric and vicious talk in public. And they would prefer the status quo, of nice-nice in public and vicious and barbaric behavior in private.

The real problem being us proles out here in flyover country just haven't measuredup. And I for one am ashamed of myself. When I began to make real money I didn't spent it going to the symphony. I built a dragster. Then I bought a house in a nice suburban neighborhood. Then I selfishly started travelling instead of giving all my discretionary income to the poor so they could buy beer and dope. To cap it all off I began to save and invest so in my old age I wouldn't be a burden to my family (or the taxpayers). I'm so ashamed I think I'll go watch PBS for a while.

I'm just wondering where you get the chip on your shoulder against working folks. What was your own family background? Are there lots of Catholics in California who associate the use of Spanish language with something lowly and uncouth?

I mean, I know you have to pull something out of your butt as if it were a way of insulting me. But these imaginary "issues" say much more about you than they could about me. They're not even remotely accurate.

You're too good for so many things, Michael K. We get that. You even have to pretend I have anything to do with these things (i.e. McDonalds, Spanish language, low income) in order to put me down.

But what do these prejudices say about you? I know little about them. Why are they your primary focus for the hierarchical pecking order at the top of which you feel a reason to place yourself?

Or just feel free to not answer and keep that self awareness back in the closet where it belongs.

"t would be a joyous irony if your daughter was one of the agents involved in the Hillary Clinton task force." She is a lefty and we don't talk politics but I have thought of asking her. She was peripherally involved in the San Bernardino shooting.

Maybe that is what Ritmo considers "berate her."

I can't guess. I have never concealed who I am let alone switched identities like he has.

Blogger Rhythm and Balls said...Come November who will R & B hold his nose and vote for? Donny the Fascist or Hillary the Criminal and Traitor?

Neither. No vote. Count me out.

Let guys like Michael the Daughter Basher decide how he's going to rationalize his vote for Hillary. Maybe it will be to set a good example for young women, or something.

This is the worst election we've ever had. The choice is between a rank narcissist and a rank opportunist. Someone who never failed at getting other people's failures to work for him and someone who never failed to take credit for other people's successes.

This is the election you wanted, GOP. And now you've got it.

3/20/16, 4:09 PM"

I give you credit for chutzpah! Yes the GOP is responsible for the rise of the criminal and traitor Hillary Clinton. The DNC had nothing to do with it. So you're going to sit it out and then come back and bitch about how this country could have given the keys to this one or that one. Hey maybe the Democrats can pull a magic act and get someone else besides Clinton on the ballot that isn't a communist or a criminal.

Where in the world did he ever get that ? I have worked since I was in 4th grade. I went through college and medical school on scholarship.

The reason why I am interested in Trump is that he is attracting working people while the "donor class" seems to be mostly hedge fund types. I have commented that you sounded rational at times but then you revert to a lunatic left state. It almost makes me wonder if you are two commenters. Maybe that's reason for the identity switch.

Michael K said..."t would be a joyous irony if your daughter was one of the agents involved in the Hillary Clinton task force." She is a lefty and we don't talk politics but I have thought of asking her. She was peripherally involved in the San Bernardino shooting."

Here it is, Spring 2016, and I'm still a Cruz guy, but I'm starting to agree with Goodwin; perhaps Trump is who we need to begin repairing the country. Obama has been SO VERY divisive, ripping the nation apart race from race, class from class, young from old. Certainly neither the incompetent leftist Sanders nor the entirely corrupt harridan Clinton can do anything except accelerate the decline.

“Whether or not you enunciate, whether or not you have a graduate school education doesn’t matter all that much to me. What matters is the principle. And [the caller] said again and again that Donald Trump projects strength, that he appears to be strong…..He said that actually H1B visas are terrific….the thing is that DT is a salesman. It turns out that many people have been duped by someone who is essentially a performer. He has been described as a carnival barker, with good reason. He is pulling a con on the American public. This is not someone who has any coherent views. He reverses his positions constantly. What he does is have an affect. And for many people that is very appealing. For people who do not follow these all that closely they don’t actually see the contradictions, they do not see a track record in which he is constantly reversing himself. He will say different things to different audiences. They don’t appreciate that the appearance of strength and strength are not the same thing. I’d say that that really gets to the heart of it. Do you care about a track record?”

Reihan Salam is executive editor and a National Review Institute Policy Fellow

Logically, everything bad that happens is the fault of the GOP, so Ritmo is on solid ground here.

Well, they are the ones who think it's great to get paid and accumulate influence in the government in exchange for pretending to do nothing, or at least a lot less with their job. Yes, I do look for the people bragging about their willingness to do nothing first when it comes to suspicions on how things got fucked up.

Listen, the big issue of the day is the GOP's implosion, by class. So of course the party that said it will END class tensions by praising the rich and telling the poor that all their problems are their own fault - and implemented or initiated 30 years worth of policies to that effect - of course the fission of their party into two halves is their own making. We knew something at least as bad would have come of it 30 years ago. This is what they get for 30 years of telling one very tiny and powerful and influential class that they matter and telling everyone else that they don't.

How can anyone hope to be intelligent enough to understand politics and not understand something as simple as that?

I don't see contempt for Sanders, whom Goodwin says he's voting for in NY primary. It's obvious the contempt is based on Trump's noxious personal qualities, which he has shown himself utterly incapable of tamping down over 9 months of campaigning. No reason to believe he can do so over the next 9 months.

Blogger American Liberal Elite said...I have had an abiding contempt for the narcissistic dishonest con man Donald Trump since the 1980's. Any contempt I harbor for his supporters is entirely attributable to their being his supporters.

3/20/16, 6:10 PM"

So I gather you are going to vote for that exemplary candidate, that epitome of honesty and humility and incidentally the subject of a massive FBI criminal and national security breach the grifter and traitor Hillary Clinton.

It started spewing again and it's my fault. You would think that someone who claims to work with surgeons would know that doing something just to do something often leads to disaster. But you would be wrong.

This is what Neil Degrasse Tyson was talking about when he said most Trump protesters were protesting against Trump supporters rather than against Trump himself. Why else would they try to block access to his rallies and try to disrupt them?

Char Char Binks said... "This is what Neil Degrasse Tyson was talking about when he said most Trump protesters were protesting against Trump supporters rather than against Trump himself. Why else would they try to block access to his rallies and try to disrupt them?"

Because the American left has only one playbook; protests, brainless chants from 40 years ago, and disruption. Since that's what the professors are teaching these days, the crybullies LITERALLY know nothing else. The sound you hear is the sound of a horde of 22-24 year old infants having a collective temper tantrum.

R&B wrote:"Well, they are the ones who think it's great to get paid and accumulate influence in the government in exchange for pretending to do nothing"Every single person I know who works for the government at the federal, state and county level, or makes their living from the government (contract service provider, politician) is a Democrat who harbors a deep and abiding hatred for the GOP and any person who does not make their living from the tax dollars extorted from working people.

Every single person I know who works for the government at the federal, state and county level, or makes their living from the government (contract service provider, politician) is a Democrat who harbors a deep and abiding hatred for the GOP and any person who does not make their living from the tax dollars extorted from working people.

Well, there you have it, folks! Everyone "Terry" knows is such-and-such so the fact Republicans dominate the federal legislature and most state governments means NOTHING. THE WORLD REVOLVES AROUND HIS OWN PERSONAL EXPERIENCE! No facts! Anecdotes only! Terry's personal experience is the ultimate reality, and will replace what every objective analysis and observation reveals.

Why does he think something so stupid... that his personal experience is the new objective reality? Because he is a Republican. They are almost all to a man afflicted with this mental illness. Other anecdotes - let alone objective reality - need to bow down to the superiority of what he has been through.

Did you know that when he was a kid politicians used to walk uphill to Congress both ways?

Hmmmm... If every Republican's own personal experience is the only reality and other experiences or objective reality don't matter at all, then I'm really stumped at how they got their party into the bind it's in. What a laborious state of affairs. So difficult to understand. How could an organization as complex as a political party go wrong when everyone makes up their own reality?

I live in Hawaii, R&B, a solid blue state, dominated by the Democrats since statehood in 1959.The state is famous for its machine politics and its endemic political corruption.Both senators are democrat. Both congressional reps are Democrat. The governor is a democrat. in the state legislature, the senate has 24 Dems and one republican, and the house has 44 dems and 7 republicans. Our state government and our congressional delegation to DC are dominated by non-whites.So go fuck yourself, you ignorant "master of objective reality."Well, there you have it, folks! Everyone "Terry" knows is such-and-such so the fact Republicans dominate the federal legislature and most state governments means NOTHING

Birkel, you're not intimidating anyone here. I actually do have some expertise on this stuff, enough to be able to read and evaluate econometric studies myself. I have in PhD in Economics, and my area of concentration was econometrics. I have forgotten more statistics than you will ever know. I know enough to recognize real expertise when I see it. You don't.

The really hilarious thing about watching people like you flocking to the Trump anti-immigrant banner is that you are being had by a con man. Trump himself is neither anti-immigrant nor anti-immigration. Nor is he a racist. He doesn't actually believe any of the stuff he spouts, he's just conning you. The man hires immigrant labor, he donates to Democratic politicians, and he even married an immigrant! But you think he's on your side. You are foolish beyond measure.

He clarifies by saying that it's not just his own personal experience that he believes is the objective reality across the board in the United States. It's Hawaii's experience that defines American politics!

So the thousands of other municipalities and 49 other states and the federal government can "fuck themselves" because TERRY KNOWS EVERYTHING ABOUT HAWAIIAN POLITICS AND PRETENDS IT'S THE SAME AS ALL U.S. POLITICS! LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL

I think I know now why it was that Adam Carolla believes Hawaiians are especially stupid.

Actually, I told you to go fuck yourself, R&B. You are thick as the metaphorical whale omelette. You claim to know about this thing called 'objective reality.' I made no such claim, however, I was able to clearly demonstrate that your claim about 'objective reality' was false. Idiocy and corruption in government is not reserved to a single party. If you want to see corruption, go to any big city. You know, the big cities run by democrats and socialists. Even the hard-core socialist governments you admire -- like Cuba, for example -- are the corrupt dominions of mad kings. If you hate corruption and hate elitism, you have no choice but to endorse small government conservatism. If you like to order people around, vote democrat and pray that your vote is rewarded with a position in the bureaucracy.

Are you able to read, I Cal? I've brought up more substance here than anyone, and will gladly debate substance with anyone who can bring it to the table.

But when it comes to someone like Michael K., a man who's obsessed with me and with insulting me, there's no longer any substance he's bringing to debate. That doesn't mean I have to take his insults laying down.

Likewise, when Terry refuses to get the point of a comment over and over again, and says "go fuck yourself," perhaps you consider that a meaningful, substantive comment for me to engage. I don't.

And yet, I still pointed out that pointing to Hawaii as emblematic of the American political system (as Terry apparently believes it to be), is folly. But I guess you considered that an unfair point to make.

So why don't you make a substantive point then, if you think I'm incapable of meeting one? It seems that's the question that should be asked. Unless, of course, your agenda is just to make no substantive points and call "foul" and say it's unfair when no one can successfully rebut any of the many that I've made. You're particularly deaf to your own side's insults and reliance on ad hominems, But for some reason, when I push back on them, it hurts your acute ears.

Thanks for the straw man, Terry. As well as the red herring. And thanks for also completely misunderstanding my point. Again.

But I'm not sure you're really even making sense of your own points. You are more difficult to follow than a scrimmage on a field with adjustable goalposts. Suffice it to say, I won't be endorsing things obsessively endorsed by the same people who make the goals they endorse harder to achieve with every election cycle that they win. But that's because for me, talk is cheap. Perhaps you feel differently.

Try applying principles. I would bet you do so in other areas of life. Fairly certain of it, actually.

But frustration about politicians responding to their incentives seems to overwhelm you. As an advocate of smaller, less intrusive and decentralized government I am prepared to lose every election. It's liberating.

I wrote "If you hate corruption and hate elitism, you have no choice but to endorse small government conservatism." I said nothing about voting republican. I implied that if you believe that you can get honest government by not voting Republican, you are mistaken. I run into this with liberals all of the time. I write A. They respond "You wrote B! That's stupid!"That is what is called the straw-man logical fallacy.

I am not a Trump supporter. I refuse to engage in the bigotry that motivates many people, not all of them on the left, who belittle the concerns of what appears to be a large segment of the American working class.Kevin Williamson's recent piece on Trump supporters was both bigoted and a cheap shot. Williamson has a libertarian side and a Catholic side. He seems to write from whichever POV most justifies his contempt for others. Pro abortion? The Catholic side comes out. Anti free trade? The libertarian side comes out. It can make for an entertaining writing style.

Harumph. I take R&B's criticism about not being able to understand what I wrote in my original comment seriously. I ran the comment through the readability tester at http://www.webpagefx.com/tools/read-able/.Every single person I know who works for the government at the federal, state and county level, or makes their living from the government (contract service provider, politician) is a Democrat who harbors a deep and abiding hatred for the GOP and any person who does not make their living from the tax dollars extorted from working people.

The results?"Readability Test Results:This page has an average grade level of about 23.

Ooh, that's probably a bit too complicated.Have you thought about using smaller words and shorter sentences?"

It says nothing good about America that R&B could not understand my writing. Nevertheless, in the future, I shall try to do as suggested, and use 'smaller words and shorter sentences' for his sake.

Yep, I think I see the problem. I ran R&B's last comment through the same readability checker:What if you just hate incompetence and the constant selling of an idea that's somehow, magically, never implemented? Especially by the party/people who sell it most energetically?

Which party can those people go for, Terry?

Or is that a bipartisan problem that should somehow nevertheless convince me to vote Republican?